All 6 defenses against the two move lady's beast checkmate.
All 8 defenses against the two move lord's beast checkmate:
All 11 defenses against the 3 move beast for cultist trade. Green prevents the attack. Blue threatens to take their cultist or checkmate instead.
Note that this isn't the be all and end all of early attacks using beasts. There are ways to attack the rook and the fortress that require actively defending them, as well as ways to exploit gaps in pawn structure the opponent might create, and notably, as with chess, the rook starts undefended, so a best taking a rook is just a full rook unless the cobra comes out to defend it or something.
I've been making an 11x11 variant and decided to make a thread about it.
First off, here's the board.
Ok,there are several new pieces here.
First, the royals.
This piece is the lord. It is a royal piece. It can move peacefully one step orthogonally, capture as a bishop, or castle multiple steps orthogonally, but not into, out of, or through check. It cannot move into check but it can give check on squares where capturing would move into check.
This piece is the lady. It is a royal piece. It can move peacefully one step diagonally, capture as a rook, or castle multiple steps diagonally, but not into, out of, or through check. It cannot move into check but it can give check on squares where capturing would move into check.
The royals may castle with any friendly piece that can move right behind them as they castle, at any time. The royal pieces may also use their castling move to be castled with. There are no castling rights.
This piece is the cultist. It moves as a bishop, then one step diagonally in any direction. As a result it is colorbound.
This piece is the fortress. It moves exactly twice in one turn as a Wazir and can capture on either or both moves. It is colorbound but actually threatening to both colors.
This piece is the palisade. It moves 1 step orthogonally. It cannot be captured normally. Instead, any piece can capture it on the square it just left via en passant.
This piece is the Javelin. It can move peacefully one step diagonally, or capture forwards as long as the target piece is adjacent or the square immediately ahead of both pieces is empty. It can leap over all pieces more than one square away from itself or its target.
This is the peasant. It can move or capture one step orthogonally, but can move up to two steps diagonally through friendly pieces first.
These are the wasp and bee respectively. They are riders that move in hexagonal arcs. Similar to the rose from Ralph Betza's chess on a really big board, but limited each to a quarter of the board. Remember, wasp can bite straight forward. Bee cannot.
These pieces are the cobra and beast. They have basic leaping moves. The cobra can move 3 orthogonally or 2 diagonally. The beast can move 4 orthogonally or 3x2.
Finally, these are the guardian and berserker pawns. The guardian moves orthogonally, the berserker diagonally. Neither can move backward. Both can peacefully move two squares on their third row but with the possibility of en passant by other pawns. Both promote on their 9th row, or the opponents' third row.
Some observations:
1. Beasts are very dangerous in the early game. In fact, they are the only piece which can reach over the entire enemy army and smothered mate the lord or lady as early as their second move, or capture the cultist as early as the third. Notably, none of these pieces can actually get out of the way in time except the lady via moving the knight, and a forward move like that is very dangerous that early in the game.
It is necessary against these types of openings for black to play one of the correct defenses in order to disallow white from getting a winning advantage or outright checkmating on move 2.
2. The cultist attacks a truly oppressive number of squares, but has several clear weaknesses. First, it can be blocked by an enemy piece at point blank. Second, it is buried deep among the least mobile pieces and cannot get out until move 4 even if you wanted it to. Third, it is colorbound. And not only that, it is very deliberately colorbound to the opposite color as the fortress and the royal starting squares. Note that a light square cultist created by promotion, and especially a pair, of opposite color cultists, are incredibly strong.
3. It can be tempting to castle forward in the middle game as part of an attack. Do not do this. It is too dangerous to have your royal pieces in the middle of the board, and castling out of or through check isn't an option once things get too spicy. Though you can capture your way out of check.
4. Remember pawns can promote into a palisade which will not be captureable immediately.
5. Despite their fire and forget nature, don't underestimate the ability of javelins to control a file, forking or pinning everything there.
6. the peasant isn't especially good offensively or in late game but it does defend a lot of squares in the starting position.